


Anniversary of a Clown

by MaskoftheRay



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Ace Chemicals is practically a character in this, Angst, Bruce Wayne Has Issues, Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Bruce Wayne is angsty, Bruce and Clark are best friends, Bruce is a bit sad, Bruce regrets everything, Bruce thinks he's to blame for everything, Come on you all know Bruce would totally do something like this, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Joker-centric, Male Friendship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Superman is a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-25 19:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18581122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaskoftheRay/pseuds/MaskoftheRay
Summary: Batman has a ritual of sorts. Every year, on the anniversary of the clown's...birth, he comes here, to the original (and now abandoned) Ace Chemicals plant, and thinks about his regrets.And Bruce has many."He was too busy reliving his failure, churning over the different, polished facets of it. The horrors of it, both in their minute details and in their overarching shimmer. Bruce’s failures were like diamonds in how he held them close and used their sharp, strong tips to cut his own mind."





	Anniversary of a Clown

**Author's Note:**

> "I can't get you, get you off my mind  
> I can't get you, get you off my mind  
> I don't know what do  
> You're everywhere I turn and everywhere I go  
> But I'll try to cut you out of my life"  
> — _I Can't Get You Off My Mind_ , Miss Li

The building looked uglier every year. But somehow despite its decrepitness, and its clear danger to public health, the building remained standing. These days, it almost seemed that the location’s aura alone was what kept it from falling to pieces. As if the universe knew the importance of keeping Batman humble, of reminding him of his failures: here lies proof of Batman’s _fallibility_. And it was as if the officials of Gotham city recognized this as well. For the building had yet to be torn down, even all these years later. 

Of all the things he regretted from his years of vigilantism, this was perhaps his biggest. Oh, he had many regrets, so many of them. Some were bird-shaped, some scar-shaped, some colored his unconscious, and sent him screaming awake. But this regret? If he had a scale and could physically pile _regrets_ on it, _this_ regret would equal, if not outweigh, all the rest. For this regret, this building, had stemmed many of the others. This regret was, perhaps, the second or third biggest regret of his _life_. And that was an impressive spot on the list. For Bruce had a list of regrets longer than _War and Peace_. 

The lock was almost rusted off, and opened with a creak when he picked it. The gates were in a little better condition, but they too would someday rust away in the harsh briny air that was prevalent near Gotham Bay. Bruce reentered the car and drove through the gates. Ahead, the original Ace Chemicals building loomed in the flicker cast by the remaining floodlight. It looked twice the size it normally did during the day. Bruce recalled from memory the shattered windows, slowly-spreading fungus, peeling paint, rusting metal, and sagging wood of the structure. 

He shut the car’s door, which sounded as loud as thunder in the quiet of the night. The concrete pad around the building was cracking, some of it nothing more than rubble-bits. In other areas, great swaths of concrete were blackened. Although he could not see it, Bruce imagined other areas were still coated in rust-colored red flakes; Joker had once felt drawn to this spot too, and Batman had _always_ followed the Joker. But now, as far as Bruce knew (which was not much, in this situation), the clown no longer came here. It was only him. 

Bruce paused at the large, padlocked back doors. In the moonlight, and flickering floodlight, he could faintly make out the prominent DO NOT TRESSPASS sign. He shot a grapple line up through the third story’s broken window. If he remembered correctly, it had shattered after a grenade went off. Or maybe it had been one of the other explosions? With little more than a clanking thud, Bruce was into the building. He paused momentarily at the concerning creak of the catwalk. After another moment, the building settled. He reached the ladder. 

Bruce leapt down, and when he flicked his cape open to slow his descent, a large cloud of dust danced up in the moonlight. Bruce walked down the precarious second-story walkway, occasionally veering around rusted-through holes, old rubble, or ominous-sounding bits of the walkway’s steel structure. _It was amazing that the building was still standing at all. And wouldn’t it be ironic if the last victim the building claimed was Batman?_ Bruce snorted, and felt a bit uneasy at the way the sound carried. It was bad luck to think such things. And while Batman did not ordinarily believe much in luck, here he was more inclined to. 

Finally, he reached the spot where _it_ had happened. In prior years, he’d leaned against the cool metal safety rails, but Bruce was no longer certain of their structural integrity. So he merely sank to the ground, one knee supporting his elbow. He dangled his other leg over the edge for a moment, until the feeling of unease, of asking for something to happen, became too much. Bruce scooted back a few inches and looked down into the black maw of the industrial vats. 

A moonbeam pierced the darkness, something else that was different than the last time he’d been here, and Bruce looked around for the source. He saw a hole in the roof, about a foot or two wide, above him. Bruce adjusted his weight, and felt a bit concerned about the way the structure creaked beneath him. But he didn’t even consider changing his location. Instead, Bruce retrieved the small flask from a compartment on the belt and measured out a half-finger of whiskey into the small shot glass he’d stored in another compartment. It was not enough to get him drunk (because even in the early years of doing this, it would have been _incredibly stupid_ to be anything even close to drunk while inside the Ace Chemicals plant), but it was just enough to burn going down. 

Over all the years of this… tradition, Bruce had never quite figured out what he was drinking to. It was certainly not to the clown, it was not to himself, it was not even to Gotham… but some strange combination of a few of those elements. It was, perhaps, a toast to remember, to- to remind himself that Batman was, in fact, human. Or maybe it was a toast to those who’d been lost because of his failure. Bruce never analyzed his motives for it too closely. 

He raised the glass, and toasted to the empty building, “Another year.” He threw back the whiskey. It burned. 

Then, with the care of a man who very-much did not want to be in control (but did not have that option), Bruce tucked the small flask of whiskey back into the belt. He stood, stumbling a bit on stiff legs, and carefully approached the edge. He flung the glass as hard as he could and was gratified to hear how distant the tinkling sound of shattering glass was. He’d much rather remember that sound than the horrendous shrieks of a human having their skin melted off. 

Bruce gripped the railing in front of him, stomach churning for a second. God, in the weeks after that night, he’d had _nightmares_ about the then-Red Hood. How he’d woken up, sweating and nauseous, thinking of that poor man he’d failed. Then, when the Joker had emerged, how he’d woken screaming, on a few notable occasions. When it had gotten _bad_ , the first time after the clown had appeared, he’d asked himself, _what have I done?_ And he asked himself that every time he came here. Joker said he didn’t know where he’d come from, but Bruce knew. He’d come from _Batman_. 

Bruce smiled ironically at the thought, _if only Joker knew how much I actually thought about him_. Abruptly, he shook himself from his position and shot the grapple, not bothering to check its security. With another soft thud, he landed on the ground floor. He avoided looking at the vats in front of him, and chose a meandering path forward through the skeleton of the Ace Chemicals building. 

A few minutes later, he’d reached the back office, and realized, with a jolt, that the red, almost graffiti-looking material caked on the door was _his_ blood. Absently, Bruce reached out, and watched with a fascinated, keen horror, as the material flaked away, coating his glove. Some of it floated to the floor below. Bruce blinked, realized what he was doing, and snatched his hand away with a vague, crawling sense of discontent. 

He walked hurriedly away after that. 

When he made it back to the padlocked doors, Bruce fully intended to leave. But his hand hesitated on his grapple. Impulsively, Bruce retraced his steps, half-imagining a ghostly outline of his earlier-self as a sort-of guide, and soon stood in front of the vats again. Perhaps it was the bit of whiskey in him (though it would take _much_ more for Bruce to get drunk) or maybe he was just being fanciful, but Bruce could almost feel a magnetic draw in the air. 

He hesitated a moment, no longer sure about this course of action. But then, Batman was never one for indecision. So he strode over to the cracked cinderblock wall (a quickly-done structural repair after the second— third?— explosion), and sat down. Bruce removed the flask and took one long swig before turning it upside down. He watched the liquid splash over the ground. In the half-light, he could almost imagine it was blood. Then he calmly screwed the cap back on and tucked the flask into the same compartment on the belt. 

After this, his wandering attention was captured again by the hole in the roof. For a moment, he watched how the moonlight dully glinted over the vat. In another couple years, the metal would be overtaken completely by rust and crumble. Most of the physical evidence was already long-gone— chemicals decayed, DNA obliterated, physical structure broken or breaking. The vat was the last thing. And when it, and the Ace Chemicals building around it, were gone, the monument to Bruce’s failure would be no more than bits of rust, rubble, and decay. 

He laughed. 

It didn’t make sense why— it wasn’t even _funny_ — but he laughed. Maybe it was an unconscious decision by his psyche, trying to relieve stress. It didn’t matter. Through the cowl, Bruce felt his head thump against the cinderblock wall behind him, and he laughed until he was choking. Until his eyes were streaming. He still didn’t know what he’d found so funny. 

This was how Clark found him. 

One, sharp creak, and then the groaning of stiff, old metal, caught his attention. Abruptly, Bruce took a deep breath in and calmed. The building seemed to ring with the sound of his laughter for a few seconds after this, and his mind, unhelpfully, conjured up an echo of the clown’s laughter to play on loop in his head. But Bruce ignored this in favor of the real problem that was in front of him: who was breaking into the Ace Chemicals plant at two in the morning? 

His heart was pounding a bit as he deliberated whether he should stand or stay in place. But the voice’s soft, familiar tone erased his concerns. “Bruce?” 

Bruce let out the breath he’d unconsciously been holding, and answered before thinking it through, “Here.” 

In an instant, Clark appeared. Or rather, Superman did. He walked the last few feet towards Bruce, giving a curious glance to the industrial vats as his footsteps echoed through the silent space. Bruce sank back against the wall, and resisted the urge to bring his legs up to his chest. Clark loomed over him for a second before sinking down to sit on the floor next to Bruce. His nose wrinkled and he turned to Bruce with a bit of an accusatory expression. “Are you drinking?” 

Bruce scowled. He wasn’t _irresponsible_ , and even if he happened to overindulge, the car had autopilot. “Not currently I’m not. Don’t worry boy scout, I didn’t even have enough to count as one drink— I’m all here.” 

Clark raised an eyebrow at the snappish response but didn’t push it. He adopted a more relaxed posture and turned to stare out at the building. Though Bruce couldn’t see all that Clark was looking at with his current position, and the dark, he could imagine how Superman was quickly scanning the building, taking in small details that even Batman wouldn’t notice. Bruce also couldn’t help but note how Clark’s eyes seemed to stick on the vats directly ahead; and how could they not? Surely he understood their importance by Bruce’s close position to them— he was a writer, after all. 

This thought annoyed Bruce, for some reason, or maybe it was the odd sense of almost-embarrassment he felt at having his ritual here invaded. What would Clark understand about the monumentality of his failure? _Superman_ would never have— _could_ never have— failed in such a way as Bruce had, those years ago. For if Superman had been battling the Red Hood that night, the Joker would never have been born. Superman would simply have flown faster than gravity could cause the other man to fall and caught him before a single hair touched the acid in those hulking industrial vats. And maybe Batman did not like another person seeing the spot of his ultimate failure. Bruce scowled. 

“What are you doing here, Kal El?” Superman turned his gaze back to Bruce, looking a bit surprised at the bluntness. But what had he expected? Bruce didn’t know. 

For a moment longer, Clark was silent, gaze tilted to the moonbeams still shining through the hole in the roof. “So this is where it happened,” he said. 

And Bruce’s words died on his tongue. He stiffened, fists clenching in the gloves hard enough to creak. His gaze jerked unconsciously away from Clark’s piercing, too-kind eyes, and landed again on the vats. On _the_ vat. He heard an echo of those screams, the wrenching sound of a man literally being _flayed alive_ , that violent hiss, smelled that sour-sweet scent, like rotten Chinese food that had been left too long in the fridge. His gloves creaked again, and he almost had to press a hand to his mouth. But the nausea in his stomach didn’t stir further. 

Bruce released a breath. He saw himself punch the future-clown. Saw the clown drop the gun, stagger back. Trip over his stupid, stupid red cape, stumble backwards. Hit the too-low barrier, and tumble over it. Saw himself rush forward, heart pounding, dreadful instinct screaming to move because of the acid. Saw the clown fall head over heels downwards, screaming the whole time. Saw himself reaching out anyways, too late. Much too late. And then the dreadful splash. The hiss of a thousand snakes. The scream. The gurgling, like a baby, like a man _drowning_ — Bruce felt his legs curling up underneath him, and he wrapped his arms tight around them, making himself small, like a ball. But no compression of the self, no comforting position, could protect him. Because the nightmares originated from inside. 

The hand pressed on his right shoulder stopped the shuddering. “Hey. Hey, Bruce, it’s okay—" 

Bruce turned to glare at Superman. Who had never failed as he had. Who had no idea of the depth of the sinkhole that was Bruce’s guilt. Who would never understand just how utterly and destructively Bruce had failed. “No. NO IT’S FUCKING NOT. Goddamnit, Clark, IT’S NOT! You don’t even know— it’s my fault that he— if I hadn’t— I _created him_ , Clark. Do you have any _idea_ what that fucking feels like? What that even means? He has killed _thousands_ of people, Clark. And one of them was my son. CHRIST, CLARK. MY _SON!_ And it’s my fault every single one of those people is dead. My fault that my own son was brutally tortured and then murdered, alone. Because I created him. Because I _failed_ so spectacularly. Every single one of those poor people. My fault. My failure. You— you have no idea.” 

Bruce’s tightly clenched fists were trembling. Not from stress, or fear, or shame. From anger. Self-loathing. Bitterness. He held them until they ached. Then, with a profound sigh, he buried his face in the palms of his gloved hands. And abruptly felt as if he’d been sucked toward the center of the Milky Way and the black hole that lurked there. Bruce felt as if he was slowly spinning apart into nothing but half-formed molecules and particles, crushed and torn by the pressure of gravity. By the weight of his mistakes. 

And Bruce was speaking, though the words burned and sizzled on his tongue like acid. His mind felt just as scorched and bitter. “Did you know that I watched. That I _heard_ it? Do you _know_ what a person sounds like when they’re chemically burned alive, Clark? I doubt even Superman has had the _pleasure_ of hearing that. Would you like to know what it sounds like when a man’s epidermis and dermis are dissolved away? When every bit of their body feels liked it has been dipped in 20,000 ghost peppers, or left in the midday sun of Death Valley for a week? _I can tell you._ He screamed, Clark. It sounded like death. And I could do nothing. I _did_ nothing. Because I thought he was already dead…” Bruce choked, and rubbed his hands over the cowl’s eye lenses uselessly. His shoulders rose and fell rapidly. Clark said nothing, and Bruce thought his silence sounded rather horrified. If it was directed at what Bruce described, or at Bruce’s failure, he was unsure and frankly did not want to be enlightened as to which it was. 

At this point, Bruce had quite forgotten about Clark. He was too busy reliving his failure, churning over the different, polished facets of it. The horrors of it, both in their minute details and in their overarching shimmer. Bruce’s failures were like diamonds in how he held them close and used their sharp, strong tips to cut his own mind. 

So when Clark reached out and grabbed his chin, Bruce was surprised. When Clark pulled his chin up and pulled off the cowl with both hands, Bruce was even more surprised. This was perhaps Clark’s goal, because his actions were enough to get Bruce out of his own head. But Superman wasn’t done, it appeared. Clark twisted so he was seated almost directly in front of Bruce and then put his hands on either side of Bruce’s temples. When Clark saw he had Bruce’s attention again, he brushed one thumb affectionately through Bruce’s hairline and released his hold. “Bruce,” he said, with a mixture of affection and irritation, “you have got to learn how to stop thinking sometimes. Too much brooding isn’t good for anyone, even Batman.” 

Bruce huffed, and felt a faint heat rising in his cheeks. _It wasn’t like he tried to overthink… that was just how he was. Alfred had said much the same to him as Clark had, but for his whole life, and it hadn’t done anything_. Clark, either trying to bring him back again, or freely abusing his power, ruffled Bruce’s hair. “Clark,” Bruce growled. 

Clark laughed, and floated to his feet. He held a hand out for Bruce and said, “C’mon. Let’s go back to the manor. I believe Alfred has a fresh batch of coffee and some dinner waiting for you.” Bruce sighed, but it was more for show than out of real annoyance. He accepted Clark’s hand up, and grimaced a little at how stiff he was. Another reminder how many years had passed since— but no, Clark, and Alfred, were right. No overthinking. He could start that now. 

“Fine. Let’s go,” Bruce said, pushing past Clark. 

A few minutes later, they reached the doors. Bruce had just pulled up the cowl and taken out the grapple when Clark interrupted. 

“Was it the food or the coffee that got you?” Superman asked innocently. Batman was just about to respond when a strong breeze ruffled his cape. Clark was gone. Bruce grappled out the window and glided to the ground. 

“Goddamnit, Superman,” he growled, striding to the car. He was sure Clark was already at the manor, talking to Alfred. Probably with a plate of food and a cup of coffee too. Bruce sighed as he unlocked the car’s doors and drove slowly to the gate. He did not look back, too busy being annoyed at Superman. _Which is what Clark had intended to happen as a consequence of his gentle ribbing_ , Bruce realized. 

As Bruce relocked the padlock and pulled away from the abandoned Ace Chemicals plant, he felt inordinately fond of one Clark Kent.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something before Joker's "birthday" because although I love Batman **and** Joker fic, I don't write (or see) enough of it. There is absolutely no canon to this (other than how the Joker was created). Basically, I thought that, of course both of them would be drawn back here, because their relationship is like that; and comics/movies/shows mention a few battles and fights taking place at Ace Chemicals over the years.
> 
> So I was like, 'duh! Of course the original building would have battle scars (like Bruce!)' I just thought that Bruce returning to the site of his 'greatest failure' was something he would totally do. Cause, you know... Bruce obsessing over his mistakes. Can't leave 'em alone. THAT's canon (at least it is to me). I do not own these characters, or DC Comics.
> 
> I have some drawings of Batman and Joker and of the clown prince of crime by himself on DeviantArt, if you feel the need for more (visual) angst. You can find them [here](https://www.deviantart.com/maskoftheray/art/Nemesis-805835953), with this [link](https://www.deviantart.com/maskoftheray/art/Origins-804327783), and finally, [here too](https://www.deviantart.com/maskoftheray/art/Accident-at-Ace-Chemicals-Sketch--812190022).


End file.
